SHE
NATION OF MAURITIUS shouldn't
work. This tiny island country
some 1,200 miles off the east coast
of Africa is overcrowded and
virtually without natural resources. Except,
as every Mauritian will remind you, one
its people.
An island patriarch, whose family came
here from Normandy more than 200 years ago
to make a fortune in sugar, explained the Mau
ritius success story with a parable. "I was tak
ing a walk the other day, and I passed a stone
wall," he said as we sat on the terrace of his
villa, staring into the turquoise sea. "This is a
wall that I've passed practically every day
since I was a boy, yet for the first time I stopped
to look at it. And it occurred to me that Mauri
tius is like that stone wall. Each stone depends
on the other for support. You remove one
stone, and the whole wall falls down."
His analogy is apt: The Mauritian popula
tion is made up of about 750,000 Indians,
300,000 Creoles-the descendants of white
colonists and slaves from Madagascar, East
Africa, and Asia-30,000 Chinese, and 20,000
whites; and they all live together in peace.
The police, who smilingly roam the island
on bicycles, don't carry guns. Muslims cele
brate Divali, a Hindu holiday; Hindus cele
brate Id al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday; and
everybody celebrates Christmas.
Twenty-five years ago, when Mauritius
gained independence from Britain, this nation
of 1.1 million seemed like anything but para
dise. With chronic unemployment and one of
the fastest growing populations in the world,
Mauritius looked as if it were headed irretriev
ably for disaster. Yet over the past decade the
island has witnessed an extraordinary eco
nomic boom. Unemployment has fallen from
more than 20 percent to about 3 percent, per
capita income has doubled, and the economy
continues to grow at about 6 percent a year.
Mauritius today is a success and one of the few
functioning democracies in Africa.
Or sort of in Africa. For such statistics as
these make Mauritius different from any other
African country. And unlike the citizens
of the nations on the African continent, Mauri
tians are descended from immigrants. English
has been the official language for almost two
centuries, but everyone prefers to speak
French or Creole. Money is counted in rupees,
and land is commonly measured in arpents,
French units that haven't been used in France
since the days of Napoleon.
The landscape of this nation two-thirds the
size of Rhode Island is equally surprising. Vol
canic hills in the center of the island have the
profiles of alps but rise to no more than a few
thousand feet. There are a dozen micro
climates-on a long drive the weather can
change every five minutes from fog to sunshine
to drizzle to sunshine again. Palms grow near
the coast, pines in the impenetrable gorges of
the interior, and sugarcane everywhere else.
Ninety percent of the arable land is planted
with sugar, arpent after arpent of thick cane
dotted with pyramids of volcanic stone pain
fully excavated by generations of African
slaves and indentured Indian laborers who
cleared the land for their French masters.
Mauritius has no delusions about being a
melting pot. Harmonious separatism is the
unwritten law of the land. While Creoles may
be found in a variety of occupations, the Chi
nese are invariably merchants; the Hindus
manage the country's political life; and the
whites, most of whom are of French origin,
still run 16 of the 19 big sugar plantations.
At Cafe de la Plage, a popular seaside hang
out in a touristic enclave in the north where
hotel rooms can cost as much as $500 a night,
Indians, Creoles, Chinese, and whites rou
tinely gather to watch the sunset-but at sepa
rate tables.
The races of Mauritius may rarely play to
gether, but they do work side by side. In a com
plex of factories on the outskirts of Port Louis,
the capital, I found some Mauritians on their
lunch break. Clouds hovered above the mess
of featureless buildings, washing the stark
industrial landscape in a watercolor gray.
Some Chinese people had just thrown open the
shutters of a small shop and were selling bot
tles of Coke and plates of curry to workers.
Indian, Creole, and Chinese men and wom
en sat down to eat their lunch and stare blankly
into the distance. I introduced myself to a
couple of young Chinese women, who were
National Geographic, April 1993
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